Teflon Buffett Has Fired 21,000 People This Year

Warren
Buffett is a lovable, avuncular chap, not one of those
axe-wielding CEOs who are feared by employees and idolized by the
kind of red-claw capitalists who think that firing lots of people
is a major leadership skill.

Yet somehow he seems to have
fired 21,000 people — 8.6% of his workforce — over the past
year. And the cuts are being felt hardest by Berkshire’s poorest
employees: some 3,000 textile workers have lost their jobs at
Fruit of the Loom in El Salvador.

Alice Schroeder, Buffett’s biographer, explains that Buffett
is expert at hiring “bad cops” to fire employees and to insulate
himself from any blowback: